The extreme generosity was in part due to the guilt they felt at not recognizing the union at first. Guilt, of course, was a two-way street. Werthen’s own sense of it had in part sent him to his parents’ hotel last week to repair the damage done by his speaking plainly. He would love to have let it go for a time, to buy a portion of peace for his family for just a few more days. Berthe’s father, Herr Meisner, had taken himself off in a huff, back to his home in Linz. The flat was once again theirs and they could enjoy their new baby unimpeded. But in the end, it had been guilt and Berthe — who had shoved his hat in his hand — that had sent Werthen with roses and chocolates to the Hotel zur Josefstadt to beg pardon of his mother and father.
But to the matter at hand: he would offer fifteen thousand.
He sighed contentedly after making this decision, luxuriating in the warmth of his office. The room actually felt cozy today, for the talented Fraulein Metzinger had seen to it that the office stove was supplied with just the right amount of coke, so the rooms were warm, but not stifling. She of course did not herself personally shovel in the fuel; rather she had taken it on her own authority to pay Trinkgeld to the Portier’s younger brother, who lived with Frau Ignatz in the building. This modest tip insured that Oskar — no one in the building knew him by any other name — made several trips each working day during the cold months to keep the fire humming along. Fraulein Metzinger had even begun to charm grumpy Frau Ignatz. What could the young woman not do?
He filled out and signed the document of offer and the next instant Fraulein Metzinger tapped lightly on his office door.
‘Sorry to bother you, Advokat. Do you have a moment?’
She wore a look of pinched concern on her face that surely meant that no good news was forthcoming. He could only hope that she was not going to leave the firm. Fraulein Metzinger had already proved herself an invaluable and able assistant.
‘Please,’ he said, rising from his desk and gesturing to a chair. She sat primly, almost defensively, like a witness steeling herself against a potentially badgering counsel.
‘I need your help, Advokat.’
Such a statement would normally be met with considered restraint from Werthen. ‘Help’ from an attorney usually meant unpaid legal advice. But coming from Fraulein Metzinger the words were like a Mozart theme, soft and playful. He was relieved, nay overjoyed that she was not asking to be relieved of her duties, was not here to complain of overwork and a boss whose head was more attuned to inquiries than it was to legal matters.
‘What is it, Fraulein Metzinger?’
‘I have a certain friend.’
Oh, God no, Werthen inwardly groaned. Perhaps this was not better after all. He was hardly the one to be giving romantic advice.
‘A “friend” is not really what I intended. But I just do not know how else to refer to him. He is a young boy, actually.’ She paused.
Werthen leaned back in his chair. ‘Yes.’
‘His name is Heidrich. Heidrich Beer. His friends call him “Heidl.”’ She smiled at this thought. ‘Well, you can see why I call him Huck, then. After Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.’
Werthen allowed that he did not.
‘“Heidlbeer,” you know, is the equivalent of the American blueberry or huckleberry. I went to Mr Twain’s lectures when he was visiting our city a couple of years ago.’
‘I did not know you were a literary lady, Fraulein Metzinger,’ Werthen feebly said. But he found himself rather confused, wondering exactly what sort of help the woman needed with said Huck.
‘He is a child of the streets so far as I can tell,’ she said suddenly. ‘I would see him by my tram station, offering to carry packages for people, to fetch coal. Any small task to earn a few Kreuzer. I let him carry my shopping one day, and he chattered on and on as if he did not want me to leave.’
‘He has no fixed address?’ Werthen asked.
She shook her head. ‘I believe he lives in the Zwingburg under the Schwarzenbergplatz.’
Werthen knew of this location through Berthe and a friend at the Arbeiter Zeitung who was working on stories about Vienna’s homeless. Hundreds if not thousands lived in the sewers like rats, for there were walkways along the open channels of waste; nooks and crannies where one could get out of the elements at night. The Zwingburg, or stronghold, was part of the Vienna sewer system, the so-called ‘cholera sewer,’ because the expansion of the original Inner City sewers had begun in earnest only after a deadly cholera outbreak in 1830, which killed two thousand. These included places like the high arched nether regions beneath the fashionable Schwarzenbergplatz, reachable via the manhole covers in the square above and then down long spiral stairs. The Zwingburg was an underground warren of living spaces along the sewers. It was reachable only when a wooden plank was laid across an intersecting channel of the sewer. If the police came to raid the place, the residents simply lifted the plank, like a moat-encircled fortress raising its drawbridge. There were also numerous side channels along which those same residents could flee if need be, an intricate maze that only those who lived there could navigate.
‘He goes there when it’s wet or too cold at night. Otherwise, he says he would rather sleep in the Prater. He has no family. His mother died when he was five, and his father is a Strotter, a rag and bone man who ekes out a living in the sewers using a net to catch scraps of fish and fish bone that he sells to the soap manufacturers. Or if he is lucky he might land a piece of jewelry someone has inadvertently flushed down the toilet. Huck has no connections with him.’
‘It sounds a hard life for a boy. How old is he?’
She shook her head, a show of disgust rather than lack of knowledge.
‘He cannot be more than twelve, thirteen. But in ways he is an old man already.’
She paused long enough for Werthen to wonder again where all this was headed.
‘I want to adopt him, you see.’
He was shocked, quite speechless for a moment.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Adopt him.’
‘Fraulein Metzinger-’
The tone of his voice prompted her to interrupt.
‘I do not want advice regarding the wisdom of my decision, Advokat. I am only asking you about the proper way to go about such a legal adoption.’
It was Werthen’s turn to shake his head now. ‘I do not see a court in the land allowing it. You, a single woman. No. It is an impossibility.’
‘Please do not give me false hope, Advokat.’
Her irony broke the tension; he felt himself smiling.
‘I am not judging you,’ Werthen said. ‘I may think such a move would be a disastrous mistake, but that plays no part in my assessment. Legally, I can see no way that an Austrian court would allow such a thing. Number one, the boy appears to have a parent already-’
‘He wants no part of the boy,’ she interjected.
He held a hand up to ask for patience. ‘A parent, delinquent in his paternal duties, but a parent nonetheless. The court will move to fine said parent for allowing his son to go homeless.’
‘As if that helps Huck.’
‘Please, Fraulein Metzinger. Allow me. Number two, you are, as I commented, a single woman. Employed, yes, but with the means to care for an adolescent? With the skills required to make a home for such a youth?’
‘So it is better that he sleeps in the sewers? That he carries coal for strangers to make enough each day to buy a stale Semmel? That he risks bodily harm living on the streets? The boy has been abused, beaten. His left arm was broken so badly by another homeless person stealing a crust of bread from him that it never healed properly. To this day Huck’s forearm has a crook in it.’
‘I am merely telling you what the legal and societal arguments would be.’
‘I am sorry, Advokat. I understand you are only trying to explain the legalities. But it is all so frustrating.’
Their discussion was interrupted by the sound of the outer office door opening and closing.
Fra
ulein Metzinger quickly glanced at the clock on the wall.
‘He is early.’
She got up and moved quickly back to the outer office. Werthen heard her voice and that of another. Then a rapping at his doorframe.
‘This is Heidrich Beer,’ Fraulein Metzinger said as she re-entered Werthen’s office. She had in tow a pathetic-looking youth of about twelve dressed in patched clothing and bearing with him a distinct smell of decay. The frayed cuffs of his pants reached well above the tops of the worn lace-up boots he had on; his upper body was covered in a hodgepodge of layers of oversized vest, woolen jacket and knee-length pressed felt coat rolled up at the sleeves and obviously the property once of someone much larger than he. On his head he wore a shiny derby cut at a jaunty angle. Despite the angle of the hat, his face appeared weary, concerned, and almost defeated. As Fraulein Metzinger had said, he looked much older than his age; for this boy there had been few enough happy, carefree moments of childhood, Werthen knew. He stooped slightly to the left, perhaps the result of the broken left arm, as if he were still protecting the injury.
Werthen rose from his desk, approaching the boy with outstretched hand. The child flinched for a moment at the sight of the hand, then understood, putting his own frail hand out to shake with Werthen.
‘Pleased to meet you, Heidrich.’
His face brightened at this.
‘My friends call me Heidl,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Werthen said. ‘And I understand Fraulein Metzinger has dubbed you Huck.’
A smile formed on the boy’s face now. It was as if he were purring at such attention. Werthen began to see how Fraulein Metzinger could become attached to the young fellow.
Then the boy as quickly changed his expression, unsure if he were being teased.
‘I delivered those things,’ he said to Fraulein Metzinger in a thick Viennese street accent.
‘Wonderful,’ she replied. Then to Werthen, ‘I thought I might use Huck for our personal delivery service. If that is all right with you, Advokat. We always have documents to be hand-delivered to other firms or clients.’
Werthen paused, feeling his eyebrows rise in spite of himself.
‘Not to worry,’ Fraulein Metzinger said. ‘I have a new suit of clothes in the works at Loden Plankl. Huck here will cut quite the figure.’ She so obviously wanted to pat the boy’s cheek, but restrained herself.
Werthen finally managed to pull himself out of his officious mood.
‘I think that is a fine idea, Fraulein Metzinger.’ He thrust his hand out to Heidrich Beer once again. ‘Welcome to the firm, Huck.’
‘I am proud of you, Karl,’ Berthe said to him as they sat down for lunch.
‘Why do I have the feeling that Fraulein Metzinger spoke to you about this before she did me?’ Werthen asked.
‘Because you are a fine judge of character as well as the possessor of an acutely analytical mind. Oh no, darling Frieda. Not on your nice new pinafore.’
The baby looked quite content at having spread cream all over her top. Though she was in Berthe’s arms, Frieda still managed to make a swipe at anything in sight.
‘And you will try to help her with this adoption?’
Werthen put his cup down on the Biedermeier dining table. ‘You’re sure it’s wise? I hate to act the sagacious paterfamilias, but what really does she know of the boy?’
‘She has a good heart.’ Berthe was partly distracted by trying to wipe the cream from Frieda’s front.
‘She does, to be sure. It is Heidrich Beer I was wondering about.’
‘Fraulein Metzinger is of age. She is not some febrile young mimosa who has led a sheltered life. You yourself said what a fine legal mind she has.’
‘Yes, a legal mind.’ Werthen said it as almost a sigh.
Berthe ignored this. ‘She clearly finds the boy special and wants to make a difference in his life. Is that so wrong? Unconventional, perhaps, but wrong?’
‘Not at all,’ Werthen said, reaching out now to hold Frieda. He loved the feel of her snug little body in the crook of his arm; did not even mind the occasional bit of spit upon his jacket or waistcoat. ‘It is an exemplary thing to do, in fact. It is good she has brought him into the firm, so to speak.’
‘So that you can vet him more easily.’
‘Yes. I am not ashamed to say so. I admit, at first meeting he seems a nice enough fellow. A bath and a suit of new clothes will do him a world of good.’
‘And how is he to keep that suit of new clothes tidy living in the sewers while you go about investigating his bona fides?’ Freed of her daughter for the time, Berthe tucked into Frau Blatschky’s Beuschel, cutting herself a healthy portion of the bread dumpling in ragout with strips of calf’s lung.
‘I believe Fraulein Metzinger has seen to that,’ Werthen said. ‘Really, the young woman should go into politics; she can charm anyone. She spoke with Frau Ignatz of all people, and secured accommodations for Huck under the eaves at Habsburgergasse. He will be rooming with the Portier’s brother Oskar, in point of fact.’
Berthe almost choked on a bite of dumpling. She coughed, her eyes filled with water, and then she managed to say, ‘How in the world did she ever achieve that?’
Werthen merely raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
‘It buys us time, however,’ he said. ‘There is no need to rush into things now, as it would seem the boy is safe enough as is.’
They were silent for a moment, and then Berthe sighed. ‘That seems an easily resolved crisis compared to ours.’
‘They aren’t still talking about the baptism?’ Werthen said.
She nodded. ‘And Father wrote today that he has decided to remain in Linz until we make some decision about the naming ceremony.’
‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.’
‘That about sums it up,’ she said.
Werthen had a guilty conscience. The young chap Praetor was a pompous ass, but Werthen could not stop feeling shame at having coerced him with the threat of exposing his homosexuality. The deed hung like a metaphorical albatross around his neck.
All that afternoon at the office it stood in the way of his concentrating on Herr Eckhof’s newest will.
He worked late at the office and walked home in the gathering darkness, up the gentle slope of Josefstadterstrasse leading from the Ring out of the Inner City. Werthen suddenly decided he would do something about the heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He would pay one more visit to Praetor. And he would do it this very evening before returning home for dinner.
Werthen turned left off the Josefstadterstrasse at Piaristengasse and followed that street to the corner of Zeltgasse. The little lane extended for only one city block. The house door at Zeltgasse 8 was already closed for the evening, unlike at his last visit to Praetor when he had been able to simply walk up the stairs to the man’s flat. Werthen looked up at the windows of the apartments, seeing the lights on in Praetor’s flat on the third floor. A shadow passed in front of the curtained window. So the young journalist was at home. Sometimes a Portier would close the house door early in hopes of earning tips from those caught outside.
Surprisingly, the building, though old, actually had one of the new house intercoms for visitors to ring the tenants when the house door was locked. But Werthen did not want to take chances on Praetor simply hanging up on him. Just then, a young couple stopped at the door to Praetor’s building, the man ringing an apartment and getting an immediate answer. The house door clicked open. On impulse, Werthen decided to follow them in. The couple looked surprised as he did so, but he tried to reassure them.
‘Sorry. I’m newly moved in. I left my change purse in the apartment and cannot very well bother the Portier without tip in hand.’
The woman smiled at this, but her husband, a thin and wary man, simply stared at Werthen as he headed to the stairs and they made their way to a street-level apartment.
Reaching the third-floor landing, Werthen knocked lightly on Praetor’s door, trying to
gather his thoughts, wondering just how he would approach the young man. There was no answer and he knocked again, a bit louder. Another half-minute passed and this time he used the zinc twist knob of the manual doorbell. Still no response.
He put his ear to the door and thought he heard movement from within.
‘Herr Praetor,’ he said to the blankness of the door, feeling rather silly as he did so. ‘It is I. Advokat Werthen. I have come to apologize. Please let me in.’
He tried knocking once more, raising his voice a notch in volume this time. ‘Herr Praetor?’
A door opened down the dimly lit corridor and the figure of a woman appeared in a backlit silhouette in the doorway.
‘What is it you want, young man?’
‘Sorry. Just trying to rouse my friend. We were to meet. He must have fallen asleep.’
‘I suggest you take that as an official rejection then and cease with the everlasting clamor.’ She peered more closely at him as if trying to recognize this visitor. ‘And how did you get in if your friend is sleeping?’
Werthen did not wait for the woman to gather steam; she was sure to start making a grand fuss, summoning the Portier and who knows what all. He did not attempt further explanations. Instead, he sensibly turned on his heels and beat a hasty retreat.
At home, Werthen made no mention of this abortive visit to Praetor. He enjoyed a quiet dinner with wife and child, and an early night in bed.
The next morning at the office Werthen sat back in his chair to peruse the morning edition of the Neue Freie Presse. Since the birth of Frieda, his newspaper reading had been confined to the Habsburgergasse. When at home, he liked to be able to give full attention to his beautiful daughter.
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